


Between Two Lungs (It Was Released)

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-07
Updated: 2010-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Muscle memory. That's all it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Two Lungs (It Was Released)

**Author's Note:**

> Future!fic

Santana almost doesn’t pick up the phone. There’s no reason to – it’s three in the morning and she’s not the first person anyone would call if someone died, so she seriously considers reaching over, knocking the phone off the cradle and pulling the pillow over her head. But it rings and rings Santana has this overwhelming feeling it won’t stop if she doesn’t pick it up, so she does.  
  
“What?”  
  
There’s nothing but hiccups on the other end of the line, but that’s ridiculous, because the only person she knows who  _hiccups_  on the phone when they’re upset is the one person she hasn’t talked to in the six years since she’s left Lima.  
  
“ _Brittany_ ” she whispers, wanting to take it back as soon as it escapes past her lips.  
  
Another hiccup and then Brittany is breathing into the receiver. “Santana.”  
  
It’s three in the morning and she’s sitting up in bed, clutching the phone to her ear and mouth, pressing the cool plastic to the side of her head as if it’ll bring her closer to Brittany. “Brittany,” she says again, her voice rough with sleep. “Brittany, what’s wrong.”  
  
She tells herself to forget that it’s been six years since they’ve last spoken; that Brittany hung up on her the last time she called home; that she never bothered to call back, her pride and heart trampled enough to hurt.  
  
“Brittany,” she says one last time, throwing the covers off her body and reaching for her shoes before she realizes this isn’t Ohio. She can’t just throw on sweats and run the three blocks between their house and climb through Brittany’s window.  
  
“I made a mistake, S.”  
  
Five words send her across her bedroom, opening her laptop and clicking through to her internet browser.  _Muscle memory_  she tells herself.  _It’s just muscle memory. Nothing more_  
  
It’s definitely not the dam in her chest cracking a little, or the desperation of needing to hear Brittany’s voice after so long finally seeping through her body.  
  
 _Muscle memory, muscle memory, muscle memory_  from doing this before; from early morning phone calls just like this one.  
  
“Where are you?” she asks, instead of “ _Where have you been?_ ”.   
  
“What happened?” she asks, instead of “ _What happened to us?_ ”.  
  
“How did you find me,” she asks, instead of “ _How come you never looked for me before?_ ”.  
  
Brittany hiccups and Santana -  _muscle memory_  - makes a soothing noise into the phone, cooing against the receiver’s mouthpiece. She can hear Brittany quiet down and then the blonde –  _is she still blonde?_ , Santana wonders – is whispering that she’s still home, in Lima, and that she just needs Santana to come home, to fix it.  
She wonders what broke, but Brittany isn’t doing much of anything besides crying and hiccupping, so Santana doesn’t ask any more questions that Brittany can’t and won’t answer. She just silently pulls on her jeans and yesterday’s t-shirt, the phone cradled between her shoulder and her ear. She packs some things she might need: her toothbrush, a pair of socks, an old t-shirt that probably belonged to Brittany, some underwear, her favorite sweatshirt, her contacts case and her laptop.  
  
She hails a cab to the airport, unsure of how she’ll get a ticket to Ohio, unsure of why she’s going back because  _Brittany_  asked her to, unsure of what awaits her when she gets there.  
  
Her phone stays on, close to her ear, at the kiosk where she demands a ticket and then begs for one, pride be damned; through security where the officer tells her she can keep it on, but he needs to hold it while she goes through the metal detector; until the flight attendant tells her gently that she needs to put it away.  
  
It’s not until she’s somewhere three thousand miles above the ground that she realizes Brittany still has the power to make her drop everything and come running.  
  
 _Muscle memory_  she chants as the plane touches down.  _Muscle memory_.  
  
 _There’s no other reason_ , she thinks when she lands in Lima. There’s no other reason than  _muscle memory_ that has her hailing three cabs before finding one that will take her all the way to Lima for all the money she has in her pocket.   
  
Nothing but  _muscle memory_.  
  
Nothing but her heart doing everything she told it never to do again.


End file.
